Whatever happened in 1982 — on an unspecified night, in an unknown location — what is happening to Judge Brett Kavanaugh now is grossly unfair and, if the Republican Party plays its cards right, the manifest unfairness of how Democrats have handled this sordid affair will redound to the GOP’s benefit in November.

The way in which this story made it to the top of the headlines, with Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein sitting on this letter from Christine Blasey Ford for six weeks before leaking it to the media, strikes many people as suspicious. Judge Kavanaugh sat for four days of hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Feinstein had this letter in her possession since July, but she didn’t think to ask him a single question about it? Has anyone gotten an explanation from Feinstein for this otherwise mysterious situation? But now that this ugly smear has gone public, Democrats say it would be wrong to expect Professor Ford to testify to the committee on Monday. So the Democrats just want to hurl this accusation out there, without anyone having the opportunity to cross-examine the accuser? This is blatantly unfair to Judge Kavanaugh, a man of hitherto impeccable reputation, and if Republicans can drive home this point — that Democrats are engaged in cheap partisan political trickery, unfairly tainting the reputation of a good man — this whole thing could blow up in the faces of the Democrats.

The committee chairman, Chuck Grassley, is a mild-mannered Midwesterner, but you can tell from his remarks about this situation that he’s angry as hell about how Democrats have turned the confirmation process into a disgraceful circus. One wit on Twitter invoked a line from an old science fiction movie: “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.” Senator Grassley is all out of bubblegum, and Democrats will get an ass-kicking.

Why did Democrats think they could pull this off? Have they made the same miscalculation they made in 2016, when they expected the Access Hollywood recordings to destroy Donald Trump? As the election results proved, Americans are sick and tired of this kind of media smear-job “gotcha” game, and there is no reason to believe that Democrats can win the midterm elections by repeating a tactic that produced defeat two years ago. And there is a larger point to be made about this:

If you’re raped, call that cops. This is what sensible people have been saying for years about the situation that has emerged on American college campuses, where claims of sexual assault have been removed from the criminal justice system and handed over to administrative panels. Universities conduct secretive hearings where students accused of sexual misconduct are systematically deprived of the due-process protections that would be their constitutional right, had their accusers simply called 911 to report these alleged crimes. Centuries of Anglo-American common-law precedent have been discarded in favor of star-chamber tribunals operating under the putative authority of federal Title IX legislation. . . .